O.C. Asian Americans: GOP in name only?

Orange County's Asian American voters, led by Vietnamese Americans, are more likely to register as Republicans than Democrats. But party allegiance is loose, and there are indications the demographic favored
Barack Obama over
Mitt Romney.

There were no extensive exit polls in Orange County, but the county's four cities with the highest proportion of Asian Americans all favored Obama – despite all four having more Republicans than Democrats. Irvine (39 percent Asian American) and Garden Grove (37 percent) each gave Obama 53 percent of its vote. Westminster (47 percent Asian American) gave Obama 49.7 percent and Romney 48.2 percent – even though the GOP has an eight-point voter-registration advantage there. Tiny La Palma (48 percent Asian American) favored Obama by a half-percentage point.

Except for Tustin, all of the county's other 24 GOP cities voted for Romney. All six Democratic cities backed Obama.

Nationwide, Obama was favored by Asian Americans 3-1, as I discussed in last week's column. In California, the margin was 4-1, according to Edison Research. While Orange County doesn't fall into that one-sided trend, Republicans hardly have the Asian American vote sewn up here.

“Neither party is having a strong hold on the Vietnamese American community,” said
Hao Nhien Vu, former editor of the Westminster-based Nguoi Viet Daily News. “I see people registering with one party or another like picking their favorite movies. They have affinity but not strong loyalty.”

LITTLE SAIGON

Statewide, 35 percent of Asian American voters are Democrats and 25 percent are Republicans, according to Political Data. Indian Americans are the most likely to be Democrats, but all subgroups favor the Democratic Party. The smallest margin is among Vietnamese Americans, where Democrats have a single percentage-point edge over Republicans.

In Orange County, 36 percent of Asian American voters are Democrats and 27 percent are Republicans. Indian Americans here favor Democrats, while the other five Asian subgroups tallied lean Republican. Vietnamese Americans – who account for nearly half the county's Asian American voters – are the most likely to be Republicans, with 40 percent registered with the GOP and 27 percent aligned with Democrats.

Why the big difference between state and county registration? Vietnamese Americans – and some of the other subgroups – have tended to register with the predominant party in their area: Orange County has more Republicans, the San Jose area has more Democrats, and the Vietnamese American electorate in those areas reflects that.

In a Republican area, there are more GOP elected officials. Elected officials – mostly Republicans here – reach out by hiring Vietnamese Americans as aides. And the first wave of Vietnamese American elected officials here tended to be Republican.

“Candidates probably join that party because they want to win,” said
Christian Collet, a visiting associate professor at Stanford University who has studied Little Saigon politics.

Anti-communist sentiment also helped attract early Vietnamese immigrants to the GOP. In 1992, 62 percent of Vietnamese American voters were Republicans. That 21-point edge over Democrats shrunk to 6 percentage points by 2002 – but then longtime activist
Van Tran, a Republican, ran for Assembly and used ethnic identification to trump party affiliation. He built the Republican advantage to 16 points among Vietnamese Americans en route to becoming the first Vietnamese American elected to the state Legislature in 2004.

INDEPENDENCE

Unusually high numbers of Asian Americans are neither Republicans nor Democrats. They account for 39 percent of Asian Americans statewide and 36 percent of those countywide. For the county's Vietnamese American voters, 33 percent are not registered with either major party.

“There is a real, substantive ambivalence about which American party – if either – is the best choice,” Collet said.

More signs of independence from partisanship: While Westminster and Garden Grove favored Obama, they also supported
Gary DeLong, the losing Republican candidate for the newly drawn 47th Congressional District. Most Republicans opposed Gov.
Jerry Brown's Proposition 30 tax increase, but Garden Grove and Westminster supported it. And while the GOP-backed Proposition 32 assault on unions was backed by Westminster and Irvine voters, it was opposed in Garden Grove.

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